Dumb
by Gypsy Love
Summary: Manny's musings on her loveobsession with Craig.
1. Chapter 1

Something? Anything? This is a dark bleak feeling, as cold as the snow on the ground, on the road, on everything.

People think it's dumb, I know. They think I'm dumb. Dumb for wanting Craig when he has Ashley. Sure he does. And sure, on the surface they have so much more in common. But it's not about that, it's not about signing petitions to keep genetically modified foods out of the caf or playing an instrument or writing songs. Those are surface things.

I don't know what it is. I know I love him. Love love, not some school girl crush or puppy love or anything silly. This is so serious it's frightening. Since eighth grade I've known what real love is, and frustration, and longing.

I'm 14 and in ninth grade so no one takes it serious, no one takes me serious. But I know what I feel. Just because I'm not 24 doesn't make it any less serious.

It would make me happier, at this point, to just forget him. It's gone beyond happiness. Sure, I was happy when he was at Spike's birthday party until Joey made him leave. I was happy when he asked me to dance at the 80's dance, even though it made Emma sad. I was happy when he said yes when I asked him on a date. Did I think that sort of happiness would last?

I don't know what I thought. I just know that somehow, somewhere, between seeing him get out of his dad's car on the first day of eighth grade and standing by his locker while he told me he didn't like me, that I was in trouble. I was in deep.

I'd never felt anything remotely like that, the way I felt when I was around him. Alive. Alert. Awake. I felt things were possible. I wasn't sleepwalking anymore, following in Emma's wake, doing what everyone expected me to do.

I guess it was inevitable I get hurt. Me. Not him. He seems to sail through everything untouched, unscathed. His heart isn't broken and bleeding, little glittery pieces of a heart shattered into so many tiny shards that there's no hope of ever being whole again. No hope. I love him without hope and without cause, this reasonless love like a monster inside me, a demon that eats everything. Reason, logic, sanity, happiness, balance, all devoured and destroyed by this love.

This is impossible. I lost him and Ashley lost him but the real loser in the whole thing is me. I had the most on the line, the most to lose.

I really expressed it that day in the hallway, the gray lockers all around us, the cold pressing on the windows. The edge of frost on the windows real low, by the ledge. I walked by his classroom on purpose, I knew it was his class. I looked through the little window in the door, I saw him. I can't describe how it feels when I see him. Like taffy being slowly pulled to the breaking point. I ache for him.

He followed me into the hall. He had on that hat, those boots, snow was still on the edge of his jeans. His eyes stared right through me, and I could see the exact shades of green and brown that made his eyes that color.

"I love you, Craig, and I thought you felt the same way," There was that heartbreak in my voice, the heartbreak I kept feeling, over and over and over. It was like a slow motion car wreck, the wheel useless in your hands, the skid deepening, metal grinding against metal until all is lost, lost.

"I do, but, I do, it's just-" Oh his voice, kind of deep, kind of scratchy, and I feel it when he speaks, like a deaf person reacting to vibrations.

"I know. It's Ashley. And she might love you, but not as much as I do,"

And that was it right there. She could love him but not as much as I did. I loved him first. I saw him first. He was just some random kid in her class, he was nothing to her. He was everything to me.


	2. Chapter 2

Dumb. That described me. Dumb girl who doesn't know about issues, who doesn't have a clue. And I haven't felt like writing lately, explaining myself to no one. I haven't felt like not writing, either.

Craig, Craig, Craig. It is like an obsession, a low grade fever, a demented idea that seems like it makes sense only because the neurons are pulling themselves apart, slowly and without pain.

I may be dumb but I'm not stupid. I know I feel a love for him that's light years beyond what he feels for me. And that's no one's fault. You never know what your heart is going to seize on, to demand, to devour. It comes like a freight train, running you over. Flattening you.

The thing is this obsession isn't happiness. I don't know why I persist in it. Don't know how my mind split in two like this, with part of me craving him and part of me loathing the desire. What would Emma say? Jumping up and down on the bed because we were going to see him at the 80's dance. We're light years beyond that.

And I loathe myself when I talk to him at school, trying to get him to see me, to interact with me, to stay in the circle of his attention. But I never have his attention. He looks around. He looks beyond me. He says my name with that desperateness to get away, the deep sigh in my name when he says it.

"Manny," and his eyes are everywhere and I still smile, still tilt my head, talk to him in a sweet voice even though when he looks over my head like that, looking for Ashley, I want to kick him in the shin.

"Is it your locker? You don't like it?" I'd said last year, and he took deep breaths, his eyes as trapped as a horse in a fire. People thought I wasn't getting it. Emma trying to be a good friend to me, 'maybe Craig isn't into this,' she said as gently as she could. I got it. I was getting it. It was one date and it didn't mean a thing. And I acted a little young, a little happy, giggling, pulling him around the carnival instead of watching the movie like he wanted to. Outside I was some silly 13 year old but inside I was 27, 37, 47, a woman who had lived and loved and knew what she wanted, what she had to have. Craig was like prey, he was in my sites. No matter how it hurt him or me I wouldn't let him get away.

I decorated the locker, so stupid and desperate. Such a kid move. But I didn't know how to reconcile the woman inside with the child I'd always been. Didn't know why I'd aged so fast. I, when I was near Craig I wanted to do things to him I didn't know the names for. When I kissed him I wanted to feel the texture of his tongue. I wanted to trace the roadmap of blue veins on his wrists. I wanted to feel his pulse.

"No, Manny…" Shifting eyes and the smile was still on my face but it was just plastic. My eyes were already filling with tears. I wanted to tear down the stupid paper hearts and the Polaroid picture. It didn't explain it, it didn't describe it. I felt like I'd died somehow and been brought back, seeing everything with new eyes. I felt dead already, anticipating whatever horrible rejection thing he was about to say.

"It's not my locker I don't like, it's you,"

Couldn't breathe for a second. I got it. Slid my eyes off to the side. In the obsession I'd fallen into I hadn't considered what to do if he didn't feel the same way. I blinked back tears, gulped like a fish in an oxygen less world.

I had been just 13, that was the problem. I had to get older. Craig was older, older than his 14 years because of things he had lived through. But I'd catch up. The tragedies would pile up on me, too, and with each one I'd have a new wisdom. I'd grow cynicism and jadedness like second skins. I'd lose all my babyfat and my school girl cheeriness and cute dimples and all that would be left would be the frightening maturity of that 24 year old in my head. I'd go back to Craig, go after him when I was mysterious and mature and my laugh was infrequent and deep. He couldn't avoid me forever. I'd surpass Ashley. I'd surpass everything. I'd be like a cat with Craig under my claw.


	3. Chapter 3

"He had a girlfriend," Emma said, and it was easy for her to be righteous. No one knew that better than me. Ninth grade for me, 10th for him and Ashley. He had a girlfriend and it wasn't me.

Emma didn't understand, couldn't understand. I didn't want to hurt Ashley, I didn't want to hurt Craig. I couldn't help myself. I'd never been so deliciously out of control. I could see him responding to me in my new sexy outfits. I'd burned away some of the trappings of that cursed childhood. Hair ribbons, high waisted pants, sweet smiles. Now my smile was slow and sexy, and soon the outside would catch up with the inside.

What was Sully? I could barely see him when I was talking to him. I didn't notice any of his details. Not like what I noticed with Craig. I had Craig memorized. The way the sun looked on his face, the angle of his nose, the length of his sideburns, the tone and pitch of his voice. Sully was nothing. A port in the storm.

Emma could judge but she couldn't know the width and depth of my desire. I had to have him no matter who got hurt. All necessary casualties in my war to own his soul. Ashley was in the way and that was too bad but she wouldn't stop me.

Terri and Hazel asked me one day if I would ask out a boy I liked, a single boy. I didn't know who they were talking about and I didn't care. I used to feel that it wasn't romantic to do that. Outside the school, just beyond the stairs, and when I turned around I saw Craig coming out of the school. I stared, couldn't help it. He was everything I wanted, and whether he was with someone else or not I'd go for it. I had to. He knew I was looking at him and he met my eyes for a second, and the message was clear, 'Leave me alone,'. Then he looked away and walked on.

"Yeah," I said to Terri and Hazel, "life's too short,"

They faded beside me. Everything was faded. Only Craig was bright and real and Emma, she couldn't understand.


	4. Chapter 4

So deliciously out of control. Sometimes it feels good to just let go of the wheel. I knew it wasn't smart to follow him after he left Paige's party all mad. I knew he'd had a fight with Ashley and I knew I wasn't his number one choice. I didn't care.

It wasn't about anything rational anymore. I only felt happy when I was in his physical presence. I almost felt like I lived for him. It wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to be the one in control, to be the elusive desired one. But that was him. I looked at him with my glazed and love sick eyes and he knew, I was sure he knew. I'd do anything for him.

The angry set to his shoulders, the anger burning in his eyes. All this emotion for Ashley. But it didn't matter. It was something I could use. And I felt sneaky and dishonest and I didn't care. I'd sink to any level to get what I wanted. And I understood that little phrase, "all's fair in love and war," I understood. When your very being is on the line you'll use any means necessary.

So I used my soft and sweet voice and tilted my head and looked cute. I told him in halting and broken tones what that song would have meant for me and I saw him soften. Saw the anger slip away. Went with him to his garage and I wanted him to sing that song for me. But that felt wrong. It wasn't written for me so I put my hand over his fingers as he reached for the chords and he looked at me then, so vulnerable and so scared. I was offering him everything and Ashley denied him everything. And I knew I was playing more on lust than love to get what I wanted just for the moment. And I cursed myself for wanting him with this focus like a laser.

But curses and regret and feeling like I'm not the right choice slip to the back of the burner as his fingers reach clumsily for the buttons on my shirt. I'll let him do anything he wants. I felt like he owned me. It was so weird and selfless. Like I ceased to be me in this way that I couldn't describe. I had ceased to exist in any way that really mattered.

My first time and it was with him. Him. Craig Manning. I wondered if it was his first time, wondered as I closed my eyes and felt the slight pain as he entered. Penetrated. Closed my eyes and opened them slowly, his eyes were shut as he moved his hips back and forth. It was what I had wanted. I wanted the boundaries between us to disappear. I wanted to no longer know where he stopped and I began. The pain was worth it. The friction that wasn't quite pleasurable, just sort of odd and interesting was worth it.

Like such a dumb little girl I thought we were in a relationship now. We had had sex, and I thought that meant commitment. I obviously hadn't learned the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul. It had meant nothing to him. I could tell by his outspread hands, the bewildered shrug as I approached him on the steps of the school. I could tell that I mattered so little to him and I could feel the fibers of my heart ripping, causing these microscopic injuries.

And then Ashley so easily dismissing me, like I didn't matter or figure into her equations. So I stepped aside and behind my puzzled and hurt expression the steel anger was forming. It was rising like a tidal wave. It was rumbling like a volcano, little steam jets hissing out and it was ready to blow. I couldn't contain my emotions. I was a mess. I walked back to Emma and she looked at me with her Emma pity but I supposed it was all I would get. Craig hugged Ashley but stared at me and I felt some dim return of hope in that tortured and conflicted stare.


End file.
